(Clearwisdom.net)

Part 1: http://www.clearwisdom.net/emh/articles/2004/7/6/49931.html

Some people think the brutal beating and torture of Falun Gong practitioners are isolated, special cases that only happen at the hands of certain vicious-natured police officers. People who live in Beijing have seen and heard too much of the Falun Gong-slandering propaganda from both the television and the radio, and neither do they want to probe the brutality behind the propaganda. Nonetheless, crimes are being committed in the capital city of China, regardless of the people's knowledge or will.

Since July 20, 1999, due to its special role in China, Beijing is the city where the persecution first began. In the past nearly five years, a number of city officials have followed Jiang's decrees in not only persecuting Falun Gong practitioners from Beijing but also practitioners from all over China who go to Beijing to appeal for Falun Gong. Jiang's group shamelessly claims that China is "ruled by law," while these people constantly order the escalation of this illegal persecution. They also threaten those people who have inside information on the persecution, pressuring them to tell the same fraudulent stories to the public in order to cover up the truth and deceive the people in Beijing and around the world.

Falun Gong Practitioners from all over China brutally persecuted in Beijing

  1. Violence on Tiananmen Square in broad daylight
  2. Female Falun Gong practitioner killed under the national flag
  3. Brutality in the Tiananmen Square Police Department
  4. Bloody atrocities in police stations and detention centers
  5. Persecution of Falun Gong practitioners by local liaison offices in Beijing

Falun Gong practitioners who exercised their constitutional rights and went to Beijing to appeal for Falun Dafa encountered all kinds of interference from the authorities. Under threat of demotion and punishment, local officials would intercept the practitioners at train stations and major intersections. They even forced all travelers to curse Falun Gong and those who refused to comply were considered to be Falun Gong practitioners. Their money and belongings would be taken away and they would be detained and escorted back to their hometown where they would be subjected to intense reprisals. Many Falun Gong practitioners were forced to leave home because they were constantly facing threats, harassment, fines, detention, torture, brainwashing and other unconstitutional abuses. Some practitioners abandoned all forms of public transportation and resorted to walking or riding bicycles for up to hundreds of kilometers to go to Beijing to appeal, in order to avoid being intercepted at train stations, on planes and buses.

Beijing police officers have commandeered important locations and tourist attractions including Zhongnanhai, Tiananmen Square, Qianmen and others, where they would force tourists to curse Falun Gong and its founder. Many hotels dare not accept Falun Gong practitioners for fear of being implicated as supporting Falun Gong. The Government Appeals Office is the "window" for detention centers, where practitioners, after they have registered their names and addresses, would be sent back to their hometown for persecution before they could even officially state their appeal. Tiananmen Square became a training ground for the plainclothes agents, police and military police, where they openly beat Falun Gong practitioners. They arrest practitioners and send them to detention centers and police stations. Those practitioners who refuse to give their names and addresses are beaten, tortured and sometimes sexually assaulted. Practitioners would often suffer another round of physical and mental abuse in the Beijing liaison offices of their home cities. Torture deaths of Falun Gong practitioners have been reported from Tiananmen Square, from police stations, liaison offices and detention centers. Below are only a few examples of persecution that Falun Gong practitioners have suffered in Beijing.

A. Violence on Tiananmen Square in broad daylight

Falun Gong practitioner Ms. Zhao Shujing, 51 years old at the time, was retired and lived in the Shijingshan District of Beijing. At around 2:00 p.m. on November 18, 2000, she went to Tiananmen Square by herself to clarify the truth about Falun Gong to the public. A group of plainclothes policemen captured her and took turns beating and kicking her, causing her to lose consciousness right on Tiananmen Square. By the time she had regained consciousness, she was already in a police van. Her nose and her mouth were bleeding. There was blood everywhere -- on her entire body, her clothes and on the floor of the police van. When Zhao Shujing was dragged to the Tiananmen Detention Center, even the staff members there could not bear to look at her terrible condition and asked a policeman from her neighborhood to take her back, but the neighborhood policeman refused to take her back because of her severe injuries. By 8:00 or 9:00 p.m., the detention center told Ms. Zhao to go home. When we met Zhao Shujing five days after she was beaten, her right eye was still swollen and bloodshot, the right side of her face was swollen, her skin was black and purple, and she had a one-inch-long cut inside her upper lip. The bridge of her nose was swollen and her right shoulder was dislocated and was dark purple.

According to inside information, the police in Beijing also hire common thugs to beat up Falun Gong practitioners. On the afternoon of December 31, 2000, a Beijing practitioner went to Tiananmen Square. As soon as he got there, before he did or said anything, the police came over and questioned him point blank if he was going to continue to practice Falun Gong. The practitioner said yes. As soon as he said that, the police immediately hit him on the head with an electric baton, causing a large bump. They then pushed the practitioner into a police van and drove to the front gate of the Tiananmen Police Department. A policeman came out and handed 400 Yuan, easily 2 weeks' pay for an average policeman, to each of the six or seven policemen in the van and said, "Here is your reward for arresting Falun Gong practitioners. You guys worked really hard." [Note: Yuan is the Chinese currency; 500 Yuan is the average monthly income for an urban worker in China.] After receiving the reward money, the police then drove the practitioner to Beijing's Haidian District Detention Center.

According to a Clearwisdom.net report on December 15, 2000, a resident of Tongzhou, Beijing was with her eleven-year-old son when she witnessed perpetrators beating Falun Gong practitioners in Tiananmen Square. Her son recognized one of the perpetrators as their former neighbor who had been sentenced to jail for rape and burglary several years ago. This woman was shocked by her son's words and walked up to take a closer look at the perpetrator. She saw for herself that it was indeed that convicted criminal.

A Falun Gong practitioner saw police officers beating three young female Falun Dafa practitioners. They dragged the young women by their hair to the van, using such violence that two hanks of hair were pulled out by the roots.

One witness described how on December 14, 2000, when a practitioner unfurled a banner, a man clad in black immediately rushed toward the practitioner and kicked him to the ground with a flying kick. That man's badge number was 051625. Another man in black was inspecting a foreigner tourist's camcorder and ordered him to erase what he had just recorded. A military policeman said to the man in black, "Have you taken away the 12 practitioners captured earlier?"

Another witness described what he saw in Tiananmen Square around 10:40 a.m. on December 26, 2001: police officers from Division 19 of the Beijing Police Department brutally beat a Falun Gong practitioner. The witness saw an open wound more than two inches long on the back of the practitioner's head, oozing blood. Another practitioner's face was deformed from beating, and a male practitioner in his 30s was beaten until his face and mouth were covered in blood.

On January 1, 2001, Tiananmen Square was filled with all kinds of police vehicles, and buses were there to take away Falun Gong practitioners. The police officers beat practitioners. They pinned a female student to the ground and stomped on her head and face with their heavy boots. Whenever a practitioner shouted, "Falun Dafa is great," four or five police officers would run up to him and beat him to the ground, push him into a police vehicle, and then the street cleaners would come and wash away the blood from the pavement. Other than the police officers who chased and beat Falun Gong practitioners, there were also personnel who directed police cars, blocked curious passers-by from getting too close and witnessing the violence, and snatched cameras from people who took pictures of these brutalities. A Japanese student from People's University took pictures of Falun Gong practitioners being beaten at the Jinshui Bridge. The police requested the negatives. He refused to hand them over, which resulted in him being taken to Division 5 of the Tiananmen Police Department. Major media from Europe, Australia and other parts of Asia, including AFP and AP, have all documented and reported these atrocities committed in Tiananmen Square.

B. Female Falun Gong practitioner killed outright under the national flag

At approximately 10:30 a.m. on January 1, 2001, a Dafa practitioner was killed at the National Flag Podium in Tiananmen Square. At the east side of the podium, a female practitioner who was about 30 years old, wearing a red alpine jacket and jeans, unfurled a yellow banner reading "Falun Dafa is Great" while loudly saying "Falun Dafa is great!" A national flag security guard immediately ran up to her and kicked her very hard. The practitioner fell on her back. Her back hit a fence post and she died instantly, with her head resting on a chain.

Seeing this incident, the plainclothes police and security guards dispersed the people in the vicinity, fearing the incident would be made public. A police van came within seconds. A plainclothes police officer was heard reporting on a walkie-talkie, "I don't know what happened. But before the van came to the scene, she had already died. Her legs are inside the fence but her head is outside the fence..." A girl about 10 years old standing beside the fence was shocked by the incident. When the police had dispersed all of the adults, the little girl was left at the scene. The guard who had killed the practitioner was replaced before his shift was over.

C. Brutality in the Tiananmen Square Police Department

Falun Gong practitioners who were beaten and arrested in Tiananmen Square were first sent to the Tiananmen Square Police Department located in a small alley at the southeast corner of Tiananmen Square. Below are eyewitness accounts of what happened at the police department:

At the police department, the officers beat, kicked and slapped the practitioners in the face. They handcuffed some practitioners and threw them in a basement, where hundreds of people were held. The people detained in that room could hardly move. They were not allowed to talk to each other or to use the restroom and they were not given any water. If they talked they would be dragged out and beaten, thrown outside in the heat of summer, or doused with cold water in the winter.

Arrested practitioners were also held in the backyard, which is in fact a narrow alley about ten meters long and two meters wide (approximately 32x12 feet) that is blocked off by two metal doors at each end. Practitioners were called out one by one. They were taken to the basement or a small room on the second floor to be savagely beaten with fists and rubber clubs and shocked with electric batons. Oftentimes several police officers beat one practitioner and would not stop until they were exhausted.

A stocky female practitioner around 30 years of age was savagely beaten. Before long the perpetrators beat her again. They took a break then beat her again. After a very long time, when this practitioner returned to the courtyard, her face was as white as a sheet, her lips were black and blue and she could hardly breathe. She held onto the gate and dragged her legs that barely moved. Soon after, the thugs returned and took her back to the small room for the fourth time.

An elderly woman in her 60s was also brought in. She was stout, robust and quick moving. She was calm and smiling when she entered the courtyard, but the perpetrators didn't spare her. This practitioner was unconscious when she was pushed out of the small room.

All Falun Gong practitioners who were arrested, including old people, young people, young mothers with children, workers, farmers, students and officials were savagely beaten.

Sometimes heart-wrenching screams were heard from those small rooms, and the smell of burned skin permeated the air.

One witness saw a Falun Gong practitioner's fingers being chopped off at the Tiananmen Police Department on December 29, 2000: "A police officer hit a male Falun Gong practitioner (in his 30s, about 5 ft 10 in tall) on the face and head. He dragged the practitioner into a room in the front of the police bureau. About half an hour later this practitioner came back and said, 'They chopped off my fingers.' I saw he had only his thumbs left, and his hands were wrapped in cloth. At that time, his blood had soaked the cloth to a dark brown color. There were two purple blisters on his face from being beaten up and his mouth was bleeding as well. I could not believe the police officers here were capable of such cruelties."

A 52 year-old male practitioner from Hebei Province was taken to the Tiananmen Police Department where he was assaulted because he refused to reveal his name and address. The police beat him on his back and his lower body continuously for three days. He received no water or food, only severe beatings. Also, a policeman stepped on his hand and ground it against the floor, which left a two-inch-long abrasion. Days later he was still unable to lift his swollen hand (see photograph). Finally, towards the end of his torture he was given an injection. Then he lost consciousness. When the practitioner regained consciousness he realized that he was in an emergency center in Beijing.

On January 22, 2001, when the practitioner was taken back by policemen from his hometown, he had become so weak that he was barely able to breathe and was only able to drink a small amount of water. Afraid of being blamed for his death, the local police asked his family to carry him home and also demanded nearly 2,000 Yuan [about four months' salary of an averaged worker in cities of China] to release him. These photographs were taken on Jan 25, 2001, the third day after his release. They are solid proof of the deplorable acts of violence those vicious policemen have committed.

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Foreign journalists have widely reported the police violence against Falun Gong practitioners on Tiananmen Square. To avoid further exposure, the police have adopted new tactics to suppress Falun Gong practitioners who go to Tiananmen Square to defend the righteousness of Falun Dafa.

The new strategy is as follows: plainclothes agents pretend to be street vendors. Once they noticed people who looked like practitioners, they would inform hired thugs on the Square to rob the practitioners of their belongings, to stir up trouble. Then the police would come and take both the practitioners and the thugs onto the police vans, pretending to keep order. Once inside the vans, the thugs and the police would beat practitioners in the police vans.

D. Bloody atrocities in police stations and detention centers

Because so many practitioners were arrested for appealing in Beijing, the Beijing police were forced to send the practitioners to different Beijing police stations and detention centers. The following are examples of the atrocities committed at these places:

Sun Jihong (male), employee of the Huanan County Forestry Bureau, Jiamusi City, Heilongjiang Province, was arrested and taken to the Fengtai Police Department on September 25, 2002. He was beaten to death four days later on September 29. According to inside sources, Sun Jihong was tortured to death. At the time of his death his face was badly deformed and looked terrible. There were three holes on the left side of his face and three burn marks on the right side. There were also scars from burnings between his eyebrows and his chin, and there was a deep cut on his left eyebrow. He had scars and wounds all over his body. The police had put lots of facial powder on Mr. Sun's face when the family went to see his body, and his family could not recognize him. They pleaded with the police to remove the powder and then they finally recognized him.

Wang Xiuying lived at Nankantou Street, Daowai District, Harbin City. Ms. Wang was arrested on May 13, 2000 and was detained in the Jiaomen Detention Center, Chongwen District, Beijing. During her detention, she and other detained practitioners made requests to the detention center which included allowing practitioners to continue to study and practice Falun Gong, as well as the unconditional release of all detained practitioners. Then they went on a hunger strike. In response, the guards ordered force-feeding with highly concentration saline solution. Wang Xiuying had been forced-fed six times, five times of those with the saline solution, which put her in a state of severe dehydration and loss of consciousness. She died at 7:00 p.m. on May 22, after failed emergency treatment.

Liu Yucai, 60, a doctor in private practice from Panshi City, Jilin Province was beaten to death at the Chaoyang District Detention Center after being detained during a Falun Gong appeal on Tiananmen Square on October 1, China's National Day. Liu Yucai's family was informed of his "sudden death from a heart attack" on October 5. However his family noticed heavy wounds on his neck and the sides of his body. Dr. Liu was cremated on October 6.

A Falun Gong practitioner saw fellow practitioners being shocked with electric batons at Liangxiang Police Station in the Fengtai District, Beijing, in January 2001: "A police officer repeatedly shocked a female practitioner's hands, face, mouth and thighs until he was tired, and then rested for 15 minutes. When he started up again, he viciously held the electric baton and tried to force her to tell him her name and address. The practitioner again refused to comply. He became angry and ordered another young policeman to bring her in into the hallway, about ten feet away from me. He took off her shoes and handcuffed her to the radiator pipes. They then started torturing her. They shocked her hands, mouth and face until the baton sparked and made noise. The practitioner still refused to say anything. They angrily changed to another, larger electric baton and shocked her legs and toes. By then, another vicious policeman arrived. He threw away her shoes and continued to shock and torture her."

A Falun Gong practitioner in Liaoning Province wrote to Minghui.net in July 2001 and exposed a police officer named Ma Zengyong who had barbarously beaten and sexually assaulted female Falun Gong practitioners in early December 2000. In his article this practitioner revealed that two female Falun Gong practitioners who were beaten and sexually abused were sent to the Chongwen District Detention Center on December 10, 2000. The guards at the detention center saw that the practitioners' faces were heavily injured and were unwilling to take the responsibility, so they told the police officers from Beijing's Qianmen Police Station to take them to a hospital for a physical exam. The two practitioners were taken to Bo Ai Hospital in Beijing. The hospital staff was shocked when they saw the practitioners' condition. Their bodies were covered with black and blue bruises. The perpetrators later sent them back to the Chongwen District Detention Center.

A female Falun Gong practitioner was arrested in Tiananmen Square on December 1, 2000 and refused to give her name and address. She was first locked in a cage in the basement of the Tianamen Square Police Station and was later sent to the Haidian District Detention Center in northwestern rural Beijing. On the second day of her detention she began a hunger strike. The practitioner described her experience at the detention center:

"The male guards force-fed me after they learned that I was on a hunger strike, and the female guards hurled insults at me. The male guards tied me to a metal bed; seven or eight of them pinned me down and put a tube through my nose into my stomach. What they fed me smelled like medicine. The guards violently wrenched my kneecap and I shook in pain. I felt as if I was about to break into pieces. Another female practitioner's hands and feet were shackled together, her head was deformed from being beaten, and the guards put a thick cotton hat on her with only her eyes exposed. She could suffocate at any time. The handcuffs and shackles cut into her flesh and blood dripped from her wrists and ankles. She asked to go to the restroom, but the inmates who were monitoring her said she was not allowed go without reporting to an authority figure. One inmate ordered a tall inmate to step on her stomach. She screamed from pain. A guard walked over to investigate, but he left without saying a word when he saw it was a Falun Gong practitioner being tortured. They force-fed her every day. We were force-fed nine times and suffered all kinds of additional tortures. Twenty-four days later we left Haidian Detention Center with the power of righteous belief in Dafa."

The following facts also provide evidence of the brutality at the Haidian Detention Center:

A female practitioner was arrested and detained at the Haidian Detention Center on December 29, 2000. She was interrogated in Room 301 by three police officers (two males and one female). She was severely beaten many times during the interrogation. At one point, the female police officer forced her to take off her sweater, leaving her only wearing an undergarment. They shocked her whole body with electric batons, and three times she fell to the ground. They ordered the practitioner to get up and continued to shock her. Later another male interrogator came and shocked her. She fell to the ground and they punched and kicked her hard. This interrogation lasted more than four hours. Because she refused to cooperate in their forced-feeding, the guards handcuffed her hands and put her in shackles. The guards ordered the common criminal inmates to beat her day and night. The practitioner was locked in Cell 402. The head of the cell beat her up almost every day and acted in a despicable manner towards her.

Another practitioner was taken away from her cell (Cell 112) on January 3, 2001 for interrogation and was not brought back until late at night. Her hands, arms, legs and feet were all black and blue. Her ribs and back were covered with wounds. The next day the guards took her away to the hospital and no one has heard from her since.

E. The persecution of Falun Gong practitioners by local liaison offices in Beijing

Many local governments or government agencies have liaison offices in Beijing. Some have their own buildings; some are located in hotels, and others are scattered in the city or nearby rural areas. Many Falun Gong practitioners who went to Beijing to appeal were first beaten by police officers on Tiananmen Square and then sent to liaison offices for another round of torture.

The most common forms of persecution and gross abuse at the liaison offices are monetary extortion and physical torment. Some practitioners were tortured to death at these liaison offices. Below is a Falun Gong practitioner's eyewitness account:

"In late 2000, a Falun Gong practitioner from Shuangyashan City, Heilongjiang Province went to Beijing to appeal for Falun Dafa and was first detained in the Tiananmen Square Police Department, then at the Shahe Detention Center and finally at the Changhe County Police Department Patrol Unit, where he suffered severe beatings. After he was forced to tell his name and address, they detained him in the basement of the Shuangyashan City Liaison Office in Beijing, next to the Zuogezhuang Market. The basement was full of detained practitioners of all ages, both male and female. All those people were held together in a windowless space, not larger than 10 square meters (about 32 feet by 32 feet). Together with others, my wife, my 10-month old baby and I were detained in that same windowless room. We had to pay 45 Yuan for our 'luggage storage fee' and 45 Yuan every day for 'food and lodging.'"

Another Falun Gong practitioner detained there was an elderly woman who was living by herself on 100 Yuan a month. In June 2000, she borrowed 500 Yuan and went to Beijing to appeal for Falun Dafa. She was held at the Shuangyashan City Liaison Office in Beijing where a female police officer extorted 61 Yuan from her and then took more than 200 Yuan in cash from her. In the end the officer demanded 3,000 Yuan in "fines." An elderly woman practitioner whose last name is Zhou from Changsheng County was also extorted for 270 Yuan and was forced to pay a 3,000 Yuan "fine." She didn't have the money, so the officials didn't allow her family to pick her up. She ended up being detained at the office for 12 days and then was sent to a detention center and held for another 15 days. The police finally extorted the 3,000 Yuan from her.

In early 2001, several Dafa practitioners were arrested on Tiananmen Square and sent to the Beijing Liaison Office for Hubei Province. The police forcibly searched their bodies. Their main purpose was not to search for Dafa materials, but to look for money and valuable items. One practitioner only had a little over 100 Yuan. This dissatisfied the police. The police said, "Is this all you carry when you travel?" The police searched and took away sums of 200 Yuan and 300 Yuan from other practitioners.

The perpetrators at the Chengdu City Liaison Office in Beijing have hired thugs to interrogate and torture Falun Gong practitioners with all kinds of torture means. Witnesses say these perpetrators search the practitioners and rob them of their belongings. They also extort money from them with all kinds of excuses, and often withhold their food and water and deny them the use the restroom. They also verbally abuse practitioners and are especially brutal toward elderly practitioners.

Six elderly practitioners from the Chenghua District, Chengdu City, including Ms. Yang (57 years old), Ms. Wen (73 years old), Ms. Zhang (62 years old), Ms. Shi (57 years old), Mr. Yang (62 years old), and Ms. Mu (57 years old) went to Beijing to clarify the truth before the Chinese New Year 2000. They were arrested and robbed of all their cash at the liaison office. Fifty-seven-year-old Ms. Mu was beaten and kicked for doing the Falun Gong exercises and was handcuffed to a basketball post and not given food for a whole day.

Falun Gong practitioner Liu Zuokuan from the 512 Factory of Chengdu City went to Beijing to appeal and was sent to the Chengdu City Liaison Office in Beijing. He was brutally beaten for doing the Falun Gong exercises. His hands were handcuffed behind his back for such a lengthy period that he did not regain full use of his hands for a long time afterwards. Two young male practitioners were hung up on a large beam with their feet dangling in the air. A perpetrator beat them until one of the practitioner's eyeglasses broke. The broken glass cut his face and blood was all over his face. Another practitioner's arms went through a window and blood soaked his white shirt. The veins were bulging on the two practitioners' shackled hands and their arms were turning black. More than 30 practitioners were detained in a room less than 10 sq. meters (approximately 32 square feet) with poor air circulation in the heat of summer.

The Cangzhou City Police Department has an office in Beijing to arrest and send back practitioners from Cangzhou City. This office forced the relatives of arrested practitioners to pay them 2,000 Yuan for each practitioner. They also had the local police station inform the relatives and practitioners' work places to pick them up, and if they arrived late they would have to pay a fine of 200 Yuan for each extra day the practitioner was detained. The police also said that if they failed to pay the required money, the practitioner would be sent to a labor camp. When they came to the police department, the relatives found that many practitioners had injuries.

In December 1999, a nine-year-old boy who went to Beijing with his mother was handcuffed for more than four hours at the Shijiazhuang City Liaison Office in Beijing.

The Guangdong Province Liaison Office in Beijing is located in Lingnan Tower. A witness described the basement this way: "I was sent to the basement right after I entered the building. Several practitioners were already there, and some other practitioners were detained in other basement rooms. The room was extremely dark with no windows, only one room had a half-window and all the other rooms were pitch black. They didn't turn on the light, either. When the officers from our local police department came to pick us up, it was often two weeks later. We were guarded by security officers. If any practitioners held a hunger strike, the perpetrators would drag them out and beat them or make them freeze in the cold winter weather outside."

Falun Gong practitioner Wang Zhongcheng, director of the Office of the Bureau of Culture from the Fangcun District in Guangzhou City, went to Beijing to appeal for Falun Gong during the Chinese New Year in 2000. He was beaten up by many police officers from the Guangzhou Liaison Office and from the Public Security Ministry in Beijing. Later, Wang Zhongcheng was secretly sentenced to two years of forced labor and was sent to the Huadu Chini Labor Camp in Guangzhou City where he had to work 15 hours a day.

Police officer Sha from the Shiyan Liaison Office in Beijing stripped Falun Gong practitioners of their coats and shoes and made them stand barefoot on the ground in the winter. A witness said, "They beat the practitioners over and over again. The police officers themselves couldn't even remember how many times they struck the practitioners. The practitioners looked as if their bodies had been dyed black and blue and were covered with bumps... They handcuffed the practitioners together and when they released them, the handcuffs had cut into one practitioner's wrist so deeply that it was impossible to take them off even after trying for a long time."

In order to conceal the number of practitioners who went to Beijing to appeal from their local area, some liaison offices in Beijing buy registration lists of Falun Gong practitioners from the Beijing police for hundreds and even thousands of Yuan per list. Then they would extort the money from the practitioners they illegally detained. On April 26, 2000, Luo Haibin, an official from Hengyang City Police Department Liaison Office in Beijing picked up several practitioners from Hengyang City at the Tiananmen Police Department. On their way to the Hengyang City Liaison Office, Luo Haibin called the Hengyang City "610 Office" and said, "Today I bought several registration lists and each costs 1,500 Yuan." The practitioners were extorted for large sums of money to cover the expense of buying those lists.

Many among the more than 900 Falun Gong practitioners who have died from the persecution have died in liaison offices. The following are just several of these cases:

Three Falun Gong practitioners from Chongqing, including Li Guihua (47 years old, from Jiangbei Town, Jiangbei City), Xia Wei (female, 43, from Guanyinqiao, Jiangbei District) and Yu Xiangmei (female, around 35, from Changshou County) went to Beijing to appeal between September and October 1999. They were arrested in late October and November 1999 and died during their detention at the Chongqing City Liaison Office in Beijing. The police told their families to claim their bodies but admonished them to keep quiet about the deaths.

Falun Gong practitioner Ms. Lin Limei was from Boli County, Heilongjiang Province. She went to Beijing to appeal in mid-May 2000. She was detained at the Qitaihe Liason Office in Beijing and died from torture during detention. Lin Limei died with her hands handcuffed behind her back. Her body was facing up and she was impaled on top of an iron fence. Her death scene was horrifying to witness.

Falun Gong practitioner Mr. Wang Guoping was 40 years old and came from Shulan City in Jilin Province. He was arrested while appealing in Beijing. The police beat him using all kinds of torture instruments. He had been physically insulted many times, including being doused with cold water after having his clothes stripped off, and being pushed down into the pit toilets. On October 15, Mr. Wang was transferred to the Jilin Liaison Office in Beijing. At 3:00 a.m. October 17, he was forced to jump from the eighth floor of the building and fell to his death.

Falun Gong practitioner Mr. Cui Guoqing, 36 years old, lived in the Yongqiang Area, Changyi District, Jilin City. He traveled to Beijing to appeal on July 5, 2000 and unfurled a banner in Tiananmen Square on July 7. He was arrested and sent to Miyun County the evening of the same day. At around 10:00 a.m. on July 11, 2000 he was transferred to the Jilin Province Liaison Office in Beijing, where he was detained on the eighth floor. He was interrogated at 11:00 p.m. and he told other practitioners later that the police questioned him about other practitioners and demanded that he curse Falun Gong and Falun Gong's founder. When he refused, they beat him. He said, "How can a practitioner curse Dafa or Master?" Around 1:00 p.m. Mr. Cui was interrogated for the second time and never returned. His shoes and shoe pads were thrown outside the door of a room, but Cui Guoqing never returned.

Falun Gong practitioner Ms. Lu Shuqiu, about 46 years old, was from Jilin City, Jilin Province. In February 2002, her family received a notice stating that Lu Shuqiu had died in the Jilin City Police Department Liaison Office in Beijing. In the notice the police ordered her family to handle her funeral affairs.

Falun Gong practitioner Mr. Gu Jiahong, 27, was a boiler worker at the Third Division of the Fifth Engineering Department of the China Construction Company in Changsha, Hunan Province. In December 1999, he went to Beijing to appeal for Falun Gong. He was detained on the sixth floor of the Changsha Liaison Office in Beijing. In the early morning of December 8, he fell from the sixth floor and was found dead. Details of his death remain to be investigated.

Phone numbers of local liaison offices in Beijing:

Jilin Province Liaison Office, address: Qishengdayuan, Beitaipingzhuang, Haidian District, Beijing, 86-10-6201-1085

Shanghai Liaison Office, address: No 7 Qianzhai Hutong, Beichangjie, Xicheng District, Beijing, phone: 86-10-6605-7046

Tianjin City Liaison Office, address: No. 1 Xiaohuangzhuanglu, Xijie, Hepingli, Beijing, phone: 86-10-6423-7282

Chongqing City Liaison Office, address: No. 2 Xinzhongxijie, Dongcheng District, Beijing, phone: 86-10-6506-1182

Hebei Province Liaison Office, address: No. 1 Zhuiba Hutong, Huanghuamenjie, Dongcheng District, Beijing, phone: 86-10-6403-1304

Shanxi Province Liaison Office, address: No 16 Jingshanxijie, Xibanqiao, Xicheng District, Beijing, phone: 86-10-6401-4647

Neimengu Autonomous Region Liaison Office, address: No 47 Chongneidajie, Beijing, phone: 86-10-6524-3921

Liaoning Province Liaison Office: No 15 Maxianhutong, Dongdan, Beijing, phone: 86-10-6524-1409

Shandong Province Liaison Office: Qishengdayuan, Beitaipingzhuang, Haidian District, phone: 86-10-6201-1021

Zhejiang Province Liaison Office, address: Qishengdayuan, Beitaipingzhuang, Haidian District, phone: 86-10-6201-1037

Jiangxi Province Liaison Office, address: Qishengdayuan, Beitaipingzhuang, Haidian District, phone: 86-10-6201-1070

Hunan Province Liaison Office, address: Qishengdayuan, Beitaipingzhuang, Haidian District, phone: 86-10-6201-1077

Jiangsu Province Liaison Office, address: Jiangsu Hotel, Ganshuiqiao, Anwai Street, phone: 86-10-6422-4807

Anhui Province Liaison Office, address: No 1 Huixinxijie, Chaoyang District, phone: 86-10-6496-5588

Henan Province Liaison Office, address: No 28 Huaweili, Panjiayuan, Chaoyang District, Beijing, phone: 86-10-6775-1188

Hubei Province Liaison Office, address: No 44A Baishiqiao Road, Beijing, phone: 86-10-6217-2288

Guangxi Province Liaison Office, address: Building 6, Nanli, Shuanghuayuan, Dongsanhuan Mid-road, Beijing, phone: 86-10-6771-5603

Guangdong Province liaison Office, address: No. 36 Nanling Road, Xisanhuan, Beijing, phone: 86-10-6841-8097

Sichuan Province Liaison Office, address: No. 5 Gongyuantoutiao, Jiannei, Beijing, phone: 86-10-6512-2361

Guizhou City Liaison Office, address: Building 18 Yinghua Street, Hepingxiqiao, Beisanhuandonglu, Beijing, phone: 86-10-6442-6679

Yunnan Province Liaison Office, address: Building 8, Donghuashi Beili, Beijing, phone: 86-10-6711-3322

Xizang (Tibet) Autonomous Region Liaison Office, address: No 149, West Gulou Street, Xicheng District, Beijing, phone: 86-10-6401-9831

Shaanxi Province Liaison Office, address: No 17 Beisanhuan East Road, Chaoyang District, Beijing, phone: 86-10-6421-5714

Gansu Province Liaison Office, address: No 17 Beisanhuan East Road, Chaoyang District, Beijing, phone: 86-10-6422-3878

Qinghai Province Liaison Office, address: No 17 Beisanhuan East Road, Chaoyang District, Beijing, phone: 86-10-6442-7188

Ningxia Province Liaison Office, address: No 15 Fensiting Alley, Andingmennei Street, Chaoyang District, Beijing, phone: 86-10-6403-5587

Xinjiang Province Liaison Office, address: No 37 Sanlihe Road, Haidian District, Beijing, phone: 86-10-6833-2266

Heilongjiang Province Liaison Office, address: No 5 Beidajie, Fuxingmen, Beijing, phone: 86-10-6802-6116

Fujian Province Liaison Office, address: No 18 Building, Fahuananli, Stadium, Beijing, phone: 86-10-6714-8823

Hainan Province Liaison Office, address: No 188A, Andingmenwaidajie, Beijing, phone: 86-10-6426-1368